


Carry On Like Nothing's Wrong

by Nefres



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Drabble, Gen, does this even make sense without context, here it is anyway, what can i say its a fic about Yuri getting punched, what the hell is characterization anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 17:40:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14289990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nefres/pseuds/Nefres
Summary: Just another argument between brothers who were not.





	Carry On Like Nothing's Wrong

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this drabble a year ago and found it in my files. May or may not be in an AU post-series universe I might get around to writing someday. Contains a few references to that as-of-now nonexistent universe.  
> Constructive crit welcome! This is my first time writing from a Yugo POV.

Yugo didn't remember what started this argument. It never mattered, in the end.

They’d met up after their classes, as usual. It was something no one was used to, not even Yuya, though he’d been going to this school all his life. The hallways had been lively at first, but their raised voices had turned heads, and as soon as the four of them had been recognized, every student had cleared out. It almost would have hurt, if Yugo had not been so distracted.

It was all in Yuri's face, that challenging smile, the condescending click of his tongue. He was enjoying this, watching Yugo flail around like an idiot over something pointless. Yugo knew his face was flushed, his yelling and rushed, half-formed insults a blatant cover for how much Yuri was getting to him. He could feel his hands curled into fists, shaking with the force of their unspent rage. Not all of Yuri's words had penetrated the thick fog of anger surrounding his higher functions, but their meaning was clear.

Normally it didn't come to this point, but now Yuri was grinning as he listed something off on his hand. Yugo realized he'd been yelling about Rin without really registering his own words. Yuri continued to count, each name - Ruri, Rin, Selena, Yuzu - adding fuel to Yugo's fire and excitement to Yuri's tone.

From somewhere behind him, a pleading voice registered.

"Calm down, both of you! It's over with, this isn't something we need to keep picking at." Yuya was shushed by a deeper tone partway through, but his protesting continued unabated. Yuto crossed his arms, appearing more annoyed with what he viewed as a silly argument than anything else. That's all it always was.

Yugo toned Yuya out. From the way Yuri's eyes slid to Yugo's left, then came back with renewed interest in his target, he’d elected to do the same.

"I'm only saying," came Yuri's affected drawl, "You don't have a great track record. Out of all of us," he made a sweeping gesture to the other two, including a wink to Yuto for good measure, "you're the weak link! I'm not surprised you don't see it, an idiot can't be expected to be aware of their own shortcomings. In fact, I-"

Yugo was sure Yuri was just pretending to go on a tangent there, for the precise purpose of riling him up.   
It worked.  
"Shut up! You don't know anything!" He took a step closer, and Yuri's expression only edged further towards unconstrained excitement. His shoulders seemed to be shaking, with laughter and something else, something less clear but just as enraging.

"-and I'm surprised she put up with it for so long.” Yuri was still talking, but Yugo had checked out as he bit down his fury.  
“Hell, I'd go as far to say she was happy when I finally brought her to Academia! She only had to worry about herself, instead of mothering you. You should thank me, I know you care most for her happine-"

Yuri was cut off rather abruptly by the sound of a fist rapidly contacting his face. What came out of his mouth was an undignified “oof.” He stumbled backwards, only staying on his feet by instinct. Yuto swore, in a tone that made it difficult to differentiate between dismay and admiration.

Stable once more, Yuri held a hand to his nose, and from the pained look on his face, the hit had been a good one. It took another second for his dazed eyes to refocus enough for him to see the blood left on his hand when he took it away. He stared at the bright colour, and a short, startled laugh left his throat.

"You punched me." He stated the obvious with a wide-eyed stare. "You punched me?" Now with audible confusion. His voice was muffled, from his hand on his face and what was probably a rapidly swelling nose. He was looking at Yuya, as was Yugo. Yuto had his eyes closed, and was pinching the bridge of his nose as though developing a headache.

Whatever surge of emotion that had overcome Yuya in that moment, whether it was at Yuri's words or out of a genuine desire to stop the fighting, it vanished in the next second. He lowered his arm from the outstretched position it had been left in. There were tears pooling in his eyes. It wasn’t an uncommon sight, but Yuya seemed frustrated with them, wiping them away instead of letting them fall.

"Yuya, what the hell?" Yugo wasn’t angry anymore, his thoughts wiped clean through total confusion. But he seemed to be the only one who was really caught off guard.

"I'm more surprised about what an admirable right hook that was," came Yuri's input, still behind the hand that had gone back to cover his bleeding nose. For someone who’d just been decked hard enough to stumble, he now seemed remarkably unfazed. 

"I'm sorry!" All eyes went back to Yuya at the sudden exclamation. He took an awkward step toward Yuri, with his hand outstretched. It wasn’t clear what he meant to do, and it seemed Yuya didn’t know either.  
"I didn't mean to, I just," he flailed his hands, paused, then pointed an accusing finger at Yuri. "You shouldn't have said that! You got carried away."

Yuri put up his free arm in agreement, now daring to look downright amused about the whole thing, and Yugo had to stop himself from adding a split lip to Yuri's injury.

"He wasn't the only one who got carried away," was Yuto's helpful interjection. Yuya's temporarily righteous demeanor went back to sheepish as his shoulders slumped.

"Yeah, I was gonna punch him! Why'd you get the good part, huh?!" Yugo shook his fist, and Yuya shrugged in response. Yugo hadn’t been serious, but Yuya seemed to take it that way.

"I just thought, after everything..." he sighed, looking pained, and Yugo caught Yuri's smile deflating a few notches, noticeably so when Yuya turned those big sad eyes onto him. "You really shouldn't be saying things like that. Considering what you-” He cut himself off. A look of panic crossed Yuya’s face and he closed his mouth and shook his hands in front of his face, presumably to give himself time to collect his thoughts.

"I mean what we, that is to say, us, did..." That wasn’t any better, and Yuya obviously knew it. “What we all… or, what most of us were a part of, I mean,” he flailed, trying to bury his original point under other, tangentially related points, and failing miserably.

In the silence that followed, Yuto apparently still nursing his headache and offering nothing helpful, Yuya trapping his hands under crossed arms like he wasn't sure what to do with them, and Yuri just staring at Yuya as blood oozed slowly from his nose down his hand, Yugo sighed. It was oppressive, the atmosphere brought on by Yuya’s words. Yuto’s mouth was a hard line, and Yuri looked wound up in a different way than he had when him on earlier. Yugo hated it.

“That’s gonna stain your uniform if you don’t do something about it quick,” he said matter-of-factly. When Yuri’s eyes widened, and he looked down at his sleeves with a horror that was too exaggerated to be real, Yugo couldn’t contain his laughter. Then Yuto snorted with a sort of fond annoyance, and the spell was broken. It was enough for Yuya to stop looking like somebody had just died, and he finally approached Yuri and produced a handkerchief. It was quickly snatched out of his hands (amidst fervent apologies) and met by equally-uncomfortable thanks. Yuri had more gracefully reacted to the punch itself than to Yuya’s attempts to apologize, which he appeared unsure how to take.

Pressing the cloth to his face, Yuri turned on his heel and started his brisk walk down the hall. Yugo didn’t blame him, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to take the look on Yuya’s face for very long, either.

“Someone had better walk me to the nurse’s office, and it’d better not be Yugo,” Yuri snapped without any venom at all. Yuto took that as his cue to jog up beside Yuri and walk beside him, though he first made sure to playfully shove him in the shoulder. So much for being so above it all. Yuri seemed to take this as an insult, and the ensuing one-sided argument echoed down the halls along with their retreating steps. Yuri sounded quite animated, and Yuto’s short responses were tinged with humour.

Yugo was left alone with Yuya. He was staring at the empty hallway as though it had something to say, and Yugo watched as he looked down at his right hand, opening and closing it. Feeling forgotten, Yugo put his hand on Yuya’s shoulder, and was surprised when he flinched and snapped his head back to look at him.

“Hey, take it easy.” Yugo smiled at him with good humour and squeezed his shoulder. “You okay? Yuri’s a jerk and all, but I didn’t expect you to snap before me.” He laughed, and then wondered if that had been a good idea to say, because Yuya was frowning at him. Yugo wasn’t good at this.

Then, like a switch flipping on, Yuya laughed too, and Yugo along with him, his with relief. His face, which had looked pinched with worry a second earlier, was shining again.  
“Listen, I’ve been wanting to do that for ages!” Yuya grinned, and clapped Yugo on the back, and the two of them began walking towards the exit.

To keep the vibe going, Yugo started in on a repetition of the story of the last time Yuri had been an asshole, eliciting more laughter from Yuya. He didn’t notice the way Yuya’s right hand stayed balled in a fist, alternately opening and closing. He didn't notice the hollowness of a mask slipped back on.


End file.
